These days, I can’t read enough to feel satiated. All I ever want to do is read. (I’ve read 82 books since January, and this still doesn’t feel like enough.) I want to travel just so that I can have extra time to read while moving about on various forms of transportation. I am on a first-name basis with the public librarians, because I am in there at least once or twice a week, picking up holds. Some of them don’t even ask me what I want when I approach the counter; they just scan my card and go look for my books, handing them to me wordlessly, unamused. I resent calligraphy jobs now, because they suck up my free time, and I can’t read and practice calligraphy simultaneously, to my dismay. I really just want to be alone with my books.

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It is easy for me to forget that people have worldviews that are different from mine. This is a consequence of my naivete and my predilection to cultivate a community that shares my broad base of opinions on how the world works. I watched about two minutes of FOX News while in my hotel room in Boston, and I felt like I was watching some broadcast from outer space. All I could think was, Who do they think they are talking to? Is there anyone listening? (Yes, apparently a large swath of America.)

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Summer is upon us, and the dogs get more easily worn out by short walks or fetch sessions. This is one of the great benefits of summer. We are waiting on Eden to mature, but people say that working-line shepherds don’t truly calm down until they are at least 3 or 4. Delightful. She turns 1 on July 5, though, so just a few more years…

View of Belmont.

One of my constant life dilemmas is how much I would love to go to grad school but how there is no useful degree I can think of getting. I’d love to get an English MA, but if there is one thing the world does not need more of, it’s English MAs. They are a particularly unbearable breed. But I would love to join their ranks. I’ve thought about getting a degree in animal behavior, but you apparently have to know something about science for that. I also think about getting a degree in Japanese literature, but I’d have to live in Japan to achieve even mild fluency, and I really like living in Virginia, with my husband and my dogs. So. No grad school for me? That makes me sad.